For a City to Shine upon a Hill, Somebody Must Turn on the Lights:

Charles Bow reflects on the nature of American exceptional-ism, the myth that somehow the U.S. is superior to all other nations, due to God's grace. (See The New York Times' op-ed.)

Bow believes that if we want to be exceptional we have to earn it. That wasn't quite true following the end of World War II, when we became exceptional because all the other developed countries that competed with us had been devastated by the world war, and we were the world's banker.

The American Civil War: 150 years later

The New York Times, in the spirit of James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, has been running a series of articles reflecting on the American Civil War that I've come to look forward to reading daily.

A recent article, entitled "The Defenders," is well worth passing on. Of particular interest is the description of the disparity between officers and enlisted men. On average the enlisted man was just short of five feet, six inches tall, while several of the officers were over six feet in height. Rations are explained, including the fact that while officers often ate meat, the enlisted men got buy more often than not on bread and what passed for coffee. The diverse nature of nutrition is worthy of note here. In addition, the enlisted men were, more often than not, at the beginning of the war, migrants, often unable to speak English, or, if they did, possessed accents that made them almost unintelligible. They were also almost always illiterate.

Finally, while a myth has persisted that nearly half of the Federal forces betrayed their country and joined the pro slavery southern forces, the truth is that, while nearly thirty percent of the officers did this, less than one percent of enlisted men did.

Y2K Revisited:

Americans generally avoid looking at the past, but now is the time of the year when media fills its space with retrospectives. (Remembering Elvis, the Beetles.) Denis Dutton revisits New Year's Eve 1999 and the morning after in today's New York Times, comparing, for instance, the billions spent to prevent "the End of the World as We Know It" by some nations, like the U. S. and Britain, compared with a country like South Korea that, for the most part, ignored it. For whatever reason, Dutton points out, we are infatuated with the concept that "It's Always the End of the World as We Know It."


Is History Repeating Itself?

A Washington Post editorial points out that back in September 1901 America suffered an act of terrorism comparable to this century's 9/11 strike: President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist.

But that act brought the dynamic Teddy Roosevelt into office, beginning what has been called "the American century." In 2001, George W. Bush was president. Instead of a "can-do" philosophy, America was led by a can't-speak-in-public brand of leadership—from energy to ineptitude.

This Day in History:

Forty-seven years ago, President Kennedy initiated his famed air and sea blockade of Fidel Castro's Cuba. The United States had failed, by that point, to assassinate the communist leader of the island, had failed to effectively back a CIA led military coup to over throw him and reestablish a regime more favorable to mob led casinos, prostitution, gambling, and illicit drug sales.

In the meantime, Castro was pandering to his people by establish free education and universal health care. And wrecking his economy by providing the free world with an excuse to buy its sugar elsewhere.

Kennedy's actions begat negotiations with Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev for a quid pro quo reduction of nuclear missals. They would pull theirs out of Cuba and the U. S. would take its out of Turkey. Meanwhile Kennedy could look heroic to conservative forces in the U. S. who had been preaching Democratic party leniency on socialists. (Remember the McCarthy witch hunts?)

When America Declared War on Americans:

Today marks the 39th anniversary of the murder of four students at Kent State University (May 4, 1970), fulfilling a wish by then President Richard Nixon, who wanted anti war protesters to be stopped, preferably by having someone shoot some of them. Ohio Governor Rhodes was pleased to set a series of events in motion that would satisfy the desires of his party's president.

For a worthwhile account, visit the Kent State University site where Jerry M. Lewis and Thomas R. Hensley describe the events and provide an excellent bibliography. Lewis and Hensley neither confirm nor reject my view of the events of that day.

It must be noted that isolating the events of that day does little justice to the historical period leading up to and following it, from the race issues, including the marches lead by Martin Luther King to the riots that set fire to American cities, from the free speech movement to the anti war movement that spread over a twenty-year period of time. It begins with the McCarthy Hearings and perhaps only ends now with the election of the first African American president.

HISTORY—When Did the South Go Republican:

Richard Reeves tells the story of "How Kennedy Won the House and Lost the South" in his opinion piece for The New York Times. Although Reeves mentions the race factor in his discussion, which focuses on changes in the Rules Committee that has a strangle hold on bringing legislation to the floor of the House, he doesn't include the South's religious bigotry against Catholics.

The sort of liberalism that Kennedy represented was often associated with Roman Catholicism in those days. Southern Democrats generally appealed to white voters by "keeping the black man down," and they believed the northern Democratic strategy was an attempt by Catholics and Jews to "raise the black man up" in order for the former two groups to achieve power within the party. The fact is that there wasn't a politician alive at that time who thought that Kennedy's Catholicism would directly affect any of his political positions. Regardless of the feeling among the electorate who might have feared that Kennedy would "take his orders from the Pope," the real concern was of a shift in the power base that he represented. Kennedy was a northern Democrat.

More Suicide Bombings in Iraq:

As Obama attempts to prepare America for the pullout from Iraq, forces there are gearing up for the free for all struggle for power that seems inevitable once the withdrawal comes. Unlike Vietnam, where a very strong power was ready to move into any political and military vacuum that would develop once America withdrew, no such force appears to exist within Iraq, thus the "you break it" analysis of Colin Powell. (See The New York Times' story.)

200 Years Ago:

Both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born. Both generated considerable discomfort in the hearts of white American southerners. 

Today in History:

Thirty-five years ago today, President "I'm not a crook" Nixon left on his historic trip to China. Many of us at the time were hoping they'd keep him. But the Chinese were too smart for that.